Microsoft clearly still cares about Game Pass. Exclusive? Not so much
Last week I stated that the Xbox showcase on June 9 would be the most important in the history of Microsoft’s gaming division. If it didn’t, it might be because this slick, pre-recorded show couldn’t possibly compete for historical impact with, say, the garbage fire that Xbox One 2013 reveal event, or the failed E3 show that followed. It was confident and smooth in its orchestration, impressive in a way that was almost soothing after the awkward anticlimax of Summer Game Fest two days earlier. But it was still hugely important: for its indication of the seismic publishing power Microsoft now has, for the questions it answered about the future of Xbox, and for the questions it didn’t answer.
In fact, the two most telling pieces of news emerged outside the confines of the show itself. The first was the confirmation, over a week before the show, that Call of Duty: Black Ops6 will be released on Game Pass on day one. The second, which was not mentioned by Microsoft during the showcase, but came out alongside it in a press release, is that Doom: the Dark Ages (one of the event’s biggest first-party reveals) is also coming to PlayStation 5.
Together, these two facts make Microsoft’s strategy very clear: Game Pass is everything, and Xbox consoles are not. Microsoft is doubling down hard on its subscription service and bringing its new, almost terrifying power as a game publisher to the Game Pass catalog. But the company had little say in Xbox hardware, and its attitude toward console exclusivity for games from Microsoft remains ambivalent at best.
After the shocking release of four former Xbox exclusives on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch earlier this year, many Xbox fans looked to Sunday’s showcase for explicit reassurance that Microsoft was still investing in Xbox consoles through its vast army of first-party to let studios make exclusive games for them. That reassurance did not come. The Xbox console exclusivity wasn’t even mentioned once. The words “coming to Xbox Series Dragon Age: The Veil Guard And Assassin’s Creed Shadows. No attempt at differentiation has been made on this score.
Reports indicate that Microsoft has “no red line” internally when it comes to which of its games it will consider for release on other platforms, and the wording (or lack thereof) used on Sunday shows that the company is keen to keep its options open to hold. It is striking that Microsoft has chosen to open the showcase with two top titles that will be available on PlayStation: BlackOps6which was already planned for PS5 (per Microsoft’s Call of Duty deal with Sony), and Doom: the Dark Ageswhich was not the case.
The Dark Ages‘ The PS5 release is an indication of how Microsoft wants to deal with exclusivity in the short term, at least when it comes to games from Bethesda, Activision and Blizzard. In conversation with IGN After the showcase aired, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said: “Doom is definitely one of those franchises that has a history across so many platforms. It’s a franchise that I think everyone deserves to play. When I met with Marty (Stratton, studio director of id Software) a few years ago, I asked Marty what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to sell it on all platforms. Simple as that.”
Spencer’s explanation – as well as Microsoft’s handling of it Minecraft — suggests that Microsoft has no plans to make previously multiplatform game series exclusive. It’s a strong indication that Bethesda’s The older roles 6, for example, is getting a PlayStation release. For everything else it’s an open question. It may seem unthinkable that Gears of War: E-Day or Fable will be released on PS5, but nothing said (or unsaid) on Sunday indicates that’s off the table.
When it comes to Game Pass, however, Microsoft couldn’t have been more emphatic. “Play it day one with Game Pass,” the stinger boomed at the end of trailer after trailer after trailer. Of the 30 games, expansions, and updates featured in Sunday’s showcase, 20 will go directly to Game Pass. Of those twenty Game Pass titles, thirteen are from Microsoft-owned studios; nine of them are scheduled to debut in 2024, eight in 2025, and three have no release date yet.
Call of Duty, Doom, Gears of War, State of Decay, Perfectly dark, FableIndiana Jones, STALKER, Flight Simulator, Granted…all coming to Game Pass as soon as they release. There are blockbuster shooters and role-playing games, strategy and sim games, melancholy indies and, thanks to partnerships with companies like Kepler Interactive and Rebellion, a fair share of AA Eurojank (perhaps the ideal kind of Game Pass game).
In a way it is more illustrative to look at what comes out of the display case will not come to Game Pass. These 10 titles include major third-party franchises such as Metal Gear Solid and Assassin’s Creed; a handful of smaller third-party games; and extensions for Starfield, Diablo 4, The Elder Scrolls OnlineAnd World of Warcraft. DLC sales for Game Pass included titles such as Starfield, Diablo 4And TESOnline is a big part of the Game Pass business model, so you could still consider these titles under the Game Pass umbrella. (World of Warcraft is the outlier here, as it’s the only Microsoft game not on Game Pass at all – and indeed the only one not available on Xbox consoles.)
If Microsoft has doubts about the long-term commercial viability of console-exclusive releases, it certainly doesn’t seem to have those doubts about Game Pass. Now that the number of subscribers seems to have stabilized (according to Microsoft’s rarely released figures), and with the supposed significant loss of revenue from rolling a guaranteed seller like BlackOps6 in a subscription service, many wondered whether Microsoft’s “Netflix for games” approach made economic sense. It’s possible that this debate was going on at Microsoft until recently: BlackOps6 developer Treyarch said Stephen Totilo of Game File “it wasn’t that long ago” that the studio was told the game would be released on Game Pass. But overall, the showcase was a resounding show of confidence in the service, and an indication that it will continue to provide great value to subscribers through 2025 and beyond.
After acquiring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is now the third largest gaming company in the world by revenue – and perhaps the largest in terms of intellectual property and publishing power. Sunday’s showcase convincingly demonstrated how it plans to fill these huge boots: dozens of solid-looking games in famous, fan-favorite franchises, stretching far into the future. Quality And quantity. The surprise inclusion of a few long-running titles that were reportedly stuck in development hell, such as Perfectly dark And State of disrepair 3seemed like a sharp message that you can trust Microsoft to keep all these projects on track, despite its poor track record in studio management.
But Xbox hardware got only the briefest mention, in the form of three new console configurations and a promise that “we’re hard at work on the next generation.” The rumors of a handheld announcement did not materialize. And exclusivity remains a glaringly open question.
As for Microsoft’s position in the broader games industry, it looks like we have our answer: it’s now a publisher first, a subscription platform second, and a console hardware platform a distant third.